Its History since 1867.
In 1867 a MS. of the Apocriticus was discovered at Athens, and on the death of its first editor, C. Blondel, it was finally published by his friend Foucart,1 but without an introduction. This was supplied the next year by Duchesne,2 who believed that the Athens MS., was identical with the one lost three centuries before at Venice. As other evidence has been added since his time, this theory cannot now be accepted. He thinks the author was from Magnesia, but locates his abode as near Edessa, giving him a date between A.D. 300 and 350. Concerning his opponent he makes the brilliant suggestion that he was the well-known Hierocles, who was something of a Neoplatonist philosopher, and a follower of Porphyry, but was also governor of Bithynia, and perhaps also at another time of Palmyra. This man wrote two books called Philaktheis Logoi (often simply referred to as Philalethes, or "Friend of truth"), and after addressing them "not against the Christians but to them,"3 he became an instigator of the terrible persecution of the Christians which broke out under Diocletian in A.D. 303. I have found much to substantiate this theory, and shall therefore refer again to its acceptance.
However, a series of German critics4 refused to date the work from the fourth century, and identified the author with the Macarius, Bishop of Magnesia, who was at the Synod of the Oak in A.D. 403, and accused Heraclides of Ephesus of heresy in his following of Origen. This new German theory was really an old French one, which had been suggested by Le Quien nearly two centuries before. There is much to be said against it, as I have shown in my articles on this subject in the Journal of Theological Studies.5 It is quite impossible to repeat in this short introduction the arguments on this and many points, so I venture to refer the reader to what I have already written elsewhere. In 1911 Harnack took up the subject, and set forth lengthy arguments for the theory that the heathen objector is Porphyry himself, and actually suggested that it affords material for an edition of his lost treatise in fifteen books against the Christians.6 But he has to admit that in any case the Apocriticus simply contains a series of excerpts from Porphyry made by a later anonymous writer, and that Macarius did not know they were from Porphyry, or he would not in one of his answers have referred his opponent to Porphyry's book De Abstinentia as an authority. With regard to the answers, Harnack accepts the theory of a later date, and puts aside my arguments in favour of, the earlier. For the many weaknesses in his theory, and the difficulties which may be better overcome by other explanations, I must again refer to what I have already written.7 The only other recent contribution to the subject was made by Schalkhausser,8 who searched for the solitary MS. of the Apocriticus in the National Library at Athens, and made the strange discovery that the MS. had been the property of the late librarian Apostolides, who had left it to his widow, and it was now not to be traced. It may be mentioned here that ten short fragments remain of another work of Macarius, his Homilies on Genesis. The only place where they are all to be found together is an appendix to the treatise of Duchesne.9 They contain the word Monogenes, which is the sub-title of the Apocriticus, as a title of God the Son. And the allegorical method used, including the interpretation of the coats of skins, shows the same following of Origen as we see in the rest of Macarius.
Footnotes:
1Macarii Magnetis quae supersunt, ex inedito codice edidit, C. Blondel, Klincksieck, Paris, 1876. It is this which has been used in the translation which follows, and reference is occasionally made to its pages.
2De Macario Magnete et scriptis ejus, Klincksieck, Paris, 1877.
3Lactantius, Div. Instit. v. 2.
4Möller, Schürers Theol. Lit. Zeit. 1877, p. 521 ; Zahn, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, B. ii. p. 450 et seq., 1878; Wagenmann, Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theol. B. xxii. p. 141, 1878. On such authority, Dr. Salmon simply states it as a fact in the article on Macarius in the Dict. Christ. Biog.
5See J.T.S. of April 1907 (vol. viii. No. 31), p. 404 et seq., Macarius Magnes, a Neglected Apologist, and July 1907 (vol. viii. No, 33, p. 546 et seq.).
6Kritik des Neues Testaments von einen griechischen Philosophen der 3 Jahrhunderts, etc. (Texte und Untersuchungen, etc. xxxvii. 4, Leipzig, 1911).
7J.T.S. April and July 1914 (vol. xv. Nos. 59 and 60), The work of Porphyry against the Christians, and its reconstruction.
8Georg Schalkhausser, Zu der Schriften des Makarios von Magnesia, Leipzig, 1907.
9Op. cit. pp. 39 and 12.